DC Designs F-14A/B Tomcat Announcement & Discussion

I dont think F14A/B had Tacan availiable

Believe ADF and Tacan, left side to rear of instrument panel, where AFCS switches are located. Do not know if that was enabled in latest update. Have not tried, hate to have to watch another Video on YT to learn how it works, sick to death of having to watch video, we need manual. Check the DC-F-14 Manual, and read descriptions for systems inside it, full descriptions there.

didn’t fly it literally for months, just started it back with the TCA captain pack, seems like there’s some starting problem with the ignition switch to on some other knobs will be forced to on and stuck, managed to get it fixed with starting without touching the airbus starters.

But then during the flight, suddenly all display including the HUD goes off but outside view still works, any idea? am on the latest version.

Same issue, I’ve yet again given up on flying this plane, getting too annoyed by the repeated issues.

Hmmm, last time I flew it worked fine. Been month possibly since then. Update 1.0.6 is installed for that flight. You may have third party things messing with the plane, start taking off all the extra stuff and see if those switches/knobs do not start to work.

As aside, the Honeycomb Throttle Quadrant, software and drivers when enabled, take over some switches and knobs, and it will not let you use mouse/keyboard to activate them, as HQ is supposed to mimic that function. One of the reasons I got rid of mine. I want “control” over every single button enabled in planes (not just this one). Having a CY take those over means I have to let that hardware tell me what to do, instead of the other way around. So check as mentioned.

You can create a profile and set the Bravo any way you want.

You can set a “blank” profile for the Honeycomb Bravo if you don’t want to use it on certain aircraft. Getting rid of the actual unit was a bit drastic :rofl:

No, the HC unit was all plastic, it was huge, took up way to much space on my desk and in my office. My Virpil VFX stick, and CM-3 Throttle take up less space than the HC did combined.

I purchased the Monster Tech Flight Chair, and have mounted those to it, and now I have sorta a custom flight setup, which I can roll away from office when need to just work, and roll it over and plug one cable in, and all the stuff comes alive so I can fly.

My second biggest complaint is it was made in China, the Virpil is made in eastern Europe, and those folks need my money way worse than China, and the virpil is 95% made of metal, so will last longer than I might live, and still be perfect. The quality of the Virpil is second to none.

I have setup control of the Virpil so it matches every game I fly in, the flaps all work using the lever in every game, the reverse thrust binding work same in all. I control the lights and knobs in the cockpit with mouse or some are bound to knobs on CM-3 unit, about as easy either way. For me, it’s just a much better unit. Virpil makes another unit which has more switches, and a landing gear lever, but no place to add it. They also make metal rudder pedals and am considering them as that would allow even more closer to real life flight controls, they would just stay under my desk all the time. Flying F-14 would actually be easier with them. Since I do have VFX on my right (not center) and the Throttle to my left like mostly in real plane, backwards in real jetliner/C-17. But been doing it this way for 30 odd years, too old to change now.

Once get the pedals and my monitor stand, I will post picture if possible.

Fair enough. So you had “bigger reasons” for getting rid of the Bravo. Your last post pretty much inferred that you got rid of it purely because you were having conflict issues.

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stupid question, any idea why the F14B refuses to turn on the nav/gps mode? it just automatically flip back to hdg mode the instant I try to flip intot AP mode

Sorry to add a few questions instead of bringing answers :confused:
I did a test flight in the Tomcat and noticed the following problems:

1- The velocity vector on the HUD has to be under the horizon line for the plane to fly level. It looks like the “center” of the velocity vector is the top of the vertical line, instead of the center of the circle. Do you guys also see that ?

2- When flying in rainy weather, the display of the HUD is impacted by the rain drops on the windshield, as if I were seeing the HUD though the wet windshield. This makes it difficult to read. Is it the same for you ?

Other that than, I didn’t have any bugs so far. I have a TCA throttle quadrant but I don’t use the engine switches for the Tomcat, I only use the VC switches. I didn’t have that bug described above about all instruments switching off. That sounds like missing generators, don’t you think ?

This is a sim bug as it happens with pretty much every plane I have with a HUD.

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For the horizon are you speaking of HUD or the screen. From my understanding from actual pilots this was a manual adjustment made in pre flight as the system was not the best

Did my first VR flight in the F-14 and OMG!!! this thing looks AMAZING!!! :heart_eyes:
Wish I wasn’t so prone to motion sickness. :nauseated_face:

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Oh my goodness. I bought the DC Designs F-14 a few days ago. Back nearly 20 years ago I did up a Top Gun F-14 Repaint and Effects update to Dino Cattaneo’s F-14D and won a flightsim.com award for it (at the time you only had 9 light switches, so I nested all the lights and effects to get beyond the limitation.)

Over many years I was beta tester for FSX, and was invited to the ACES FS11 Design Advisory Board before Microsoft shut down the ACES team. I then participated in a few potential replacement sims before Dovetail Games bought the rights to develop the sim further. I ended up contracted to do up some game design documents and design various systems for Flight Simulator World and Flight Simulator Flight School and saw the transition to 64 bit and core sections of the sim get swapped out, such as the water system and cloud system. Then Microsoft took the option to take it back and handed it to Asobo, and so much of what is in MSFS are things I envisioned in the game design documents, I’m pretty stoked, but aside from development of sims and addons I’m first and foremost a pilot and huge fan of Top Gun and the F-14. I also got to work with the actor who played Hollywood in Top Gun while working on the 1990’s tv series of Flipper.

So fast forward to this week, I’ve been getting my Pimax 5K Super all set up and optimized with the sim, and finally find the sweet spot with perfect clarity and solid frame rates. The 140.3 degree FOV sure does help as well. So after taking the Extra 300 diving over the rim of the grand canyon and seeing the land fall away in my peripheral vision, I knew I had to finally buy the F-14 from DC Designs.

I was a little tentative about the DC Designs Tomcat after using the HeatBlur one in DCS, but almost immediately I forgot about any concerns I had about the F-14 in MSFS. I’ve spent the last 2 days flying in VR with the Pimax and the F-14 and the immersion is so incredible it fools the mind. Zooming through and dancing around the cloud tops at Mach 2+ as well as flying low level about Mach 1.5ish is exactly what I’ve always dreamed of as a real world pilot. I wanted to be a fighter pilot but life got in the way.

Dean the Tomcat is amazing, today was the best experience yet. I was messing around after optimizing the Pimax 5K, overclocking my i9 12900K and RTX 2080 Ti, I was getting a solid 40fps at 90Hz refresh rate (I plan on a new CPU and 4090 Ti when it comes out) and turned clouds to Thunderstorm, thinking I would end up with VR flashing and issues, but I’ve found the right settings and everything was maxxed apart from ground cover being on low. Next thing I know I’m flying between three layers of the most intense storm system I have ever seen. I tried to take a screenshot but for some reason it wouldn’t fire.

Dean, thank you, your work has given me the best experience flying in a simulator I’ve ever had.

A quick guide to setting up a Pimax 5K for the best visuals and frame rates:

3200Mhz RAM under XMP
12900K overclocked to 5.1 GHz via Intel’s extreme tuning utility auto overclock
MSI Afterburner auto overclock for the RTX 2080Ti
Steam VR settings to 100% scale (all motion projection and smoothing off)
PiTool set to Large, Render Quality 1.0, Aggressive FOV, Parallel Reprojection Off, Smart Smoothing Off, Compulsive Smooth Close, Hidden Area Mask Enabled
OpenXR Toolkit - CAS On, Sharpening between 77-100%, Foveated Rendering on Quality and I think that’s about it, I’ll verify again tomorrow

With those settings and clear sky I was around 38-42 FPS in all conditions. No random flashing. I’ll try and do a tutorial video when I get a chance.

P.S. just over a year ago I was living in Brownsville, TX after having interviewed for a position with SpaceX, and I went up to Corpus Christi to see the actual F-14 that was used in Top Gun and took a ton of reference photos as it’s now been painted up in the original Maverick movie color scheme. So I’m hoping to get a hyper accurate repaint of Maverick’s Tomcat once I get some time to do the work.

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One of the pilots who was in F-18s in movie lives near here at a private Air Park. I have never met him, but another F-14 pilot I have met, excellent fellow, and we have plans to catch up at lunch at some point.

The F-14 in MSFS is excellent, and it’s my 1st favorite fighter plane and 2nd favorite plane I like flying in sim.

In Q3, DC Designs is planning on releasing the C-17GM-III cargo plane. That is my all-time favorite plane to fly period. It just loves to fly, and never wants to land.

Thanks for the kind words, it’s really great to hear you’re enjoying the F-14s so much, and Happy New Year!

P.S. F-14D coming to the package in 2023, along with further refinements and improvements.

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Dean, you and CNJ are the best. We all love the F-14. D model, please have a manual explaining the various PFD’s because it’s way different than the B as current.

I am especially looking forward to the C-17 and have been flying the one in FSX and the one in X-Plane 10 ported over to 11 and now moved to 12 (it don’t work very well in 12). Been flying those for at least 4-5 years. Aint no expert but could test if you want.

I sorta think, hardware is also going to have a bearing on it, planning on new more powerful PC 1st half this year. Hoping prices fall and the powers that be, get the cable issue worked out on the 4090 series cards. My suggestion would be a clip arrangement like the old Parrell cables we used for printers back in the day. That certainly would be ugly, but it would hold it in, and not let it move, the plastic clips now used are IMHO flimsy to say the least. Maybe a larger clip and with wider notch giving it more gripping surface in the slot. Oh Well.

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This F-14 “Cold & Dark” video is the best example of an effective learning tool I have ever seen for any aircraft in MSFS. The slow, steady, and careful camera movements are especially effective in presenting the “how-to”. So many other videos intended to be “instructional” have sloppy camera movements that zip around the cockpit haphazardly, thus requiring periodic pauses and repositioning in order to see what device and positioning was used. Thanks for doing it so effectively.

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